Northern-Texas School District Approved New Policies That Will Criticaly Affect LGBTQ Kids.

On the night of Monday August 22, the Grapevine-Colleyville school trustees, an independent school district in Dallas, passed a set of policies that will change how teachers can discuss gender and sexualitty with their students. The Dallas Morning News, along with the Education Lab, raised several questions and pointed several problems about how these desicition would affect the LGBTQ students of that school district.

The Education Lab pointed out four main issues that will change with the new policies approved in that Northern-Texas school district: Pronouns, bathrooms, sexual orientation and sports. The most relevant point are: 

1. This district will not encourage the correct use of pronouns for students or teachers that don’t align with the person’s biological sex. Teachers will not be required to use the pronouns even if there is a formal request of the family.  
2. The district will ask that every multiple-occupancy bathroom must be used by a person based on their biological sex.
3. District staff should not talk about sexual orientation or gender identity until after a child has finished fifth grade.
4. In alignment with Texas code, the district will not allow a student to compete in a sponsored athletic competition “designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex.

The issues have raised a lot of different questions about how much these decisions will affect LGBTQ kids in this disfrict. The Lab also concluded that these new policies are a part of the raft of state policies that have emerged in recent years targeting LBGTQ communities.